Editors-at-Large

Publicity

Short Fiction Reviews, August 2005

At a party the other day the old topic of sexism in science fiction
came up. There have been studies done, statistical compilations, showing
that it is more difficult for women to publish in science fiction than
it is for men. The topic has been discussed ad nauseam in various
cons over the past few years without reaching consensus on any single
explanation or correction. One editor has acknowledged that before
the statistical analysis, he thought he published more male authors
than female authors because that was representative of the rates of
submissions, but that he undertook his own analysis and found that
correlating submissions to published stories he clearly favored
male authors. Now this was no old-guard editor with overt sexist
attitudes or beliefs, so we have to ask the tough questions: are the
women simply not writing good enough stories? Are male editors
still prejudiced, if only on a subconscious level? Is there some
essential distinction between men’s stories and women’s stories such
that male editors will naturally filter in favor of their own gender?

I would like to see more recent data on the various magazines, correlated
against submission rates, the gender and age of the editor, and so forth.

However, the early study found an even greater disparity in the rate
at which women were reviewed. This strikes more at home, and
I began to wonder what my own stats look like. A quick glance over recent
months suggests that I, too, tend to review males somewhat disproportionately
more than females. Now, that might be tempered by the fact that my reviews
are not always positive — that is to say, it’s possible that
some authors, male or female, might be relieved at being overlooked here.
But the simple fact is, I try to review the stories about which I think I
have something worth saying. And at first blush (I’ll try to gather some
stats next month), it looks like I may be “favoring” male authors, just
as Locus has been accused of doing.

My first reaction to this is that like an editor, I make a lot of
decisions from the gut. When deciding what to analyze, I first respond
to what moves me. And perhaps it’s no surprise that the themes and
motifs that move other men to write may be connecting most strongly with my
own sensibilities. I certainly don’t intend
any sexism, and when I encounter it in the literature I cringe.

Back to the party. One suggestion made by a prominent female author
was to balance male editors with female counterparts, either as full
co-editor, or in some other position with sufficient influence over
the content of the magazine to balance the gender sensibilities of
the male editor. (And down that road, would Ellen Datlow, Shawna McCarthy,
and Sheila Williams be taking on similar male ombudsmen?)

And what about reviews? Well, if any women out there think I’m doing
a rotten job covering female authors, I’m open to suggestions.

Next Month: In addition to the usual suspects, I’ve already received (too late for inclusion in this issue) Talebones (#30), Black Gate (#8), Interzone (August), and Aeon (#4) ... so look for those sometime around NASFiC.

The 3rd Alternative (#42)

Welcome to the last issue of The 3rd Alternative. In a way,
we knew this was happening: when TTA press brought Interzone into
the family, there was an inevitable impact on The 3rd Alternative:
it’s tough to play the role of rebellious outsider when you own the
insider, and any sensible publisher will create products that complement
each other rather than compete with each other. In any case, The 3rd
Alternative has always felt like it wanted to go for
the dark edges of fantasy and science fiction, if not outright horror,
and now it has a good reason to do so.

What we didn’t expect was that it would change its name. So, starting
with the next issue, look for Black Static in the mail.

If the content in this new issue is characteristic of what is to
come, I have to question whether I am the right reader. I utterly failed
to understand more than half the stories in this issue, and cannot
figure out whether I am simply not reading them the way they were
meant to be read (ie., “understanding” isn’t the point), or whether
they are simply too sophisticated for my rough palate:

Elizabeth Bear’s vampire story is constructed
as a puzzle for fans of blues music: the main character (a vampire) is
the undead continuation of some well-known musician. Apparently for readers
who decipher the clues this has some entertainment value. I can vouch
that for those of us not well acquainted with the field, it’s more
frustrating than anything. Douglas Lain’s mermaid story is sufficiently
surreal that any interpretation of the text, and in particular the
ending, runs into the impenetrable wall of: “Is it magic or is it madness?”
Darren Speegle’s Lago Di Iniquita also has
something of the descent-into-madness quality about it, and also comes
with a challenging ending that left me uncomfortably uncertain about
the whole story even after two close readings. As for Matthew Francis’
The Vegetable Lamb, I tried very, very hard to figure this
one out....

The Vegetable Lamb by Matthew Francis

Matthew Francis brings a leisurely, languid style to this tale of
a Consul’s wife. Resonant with Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the
strange, remote land of Tartary harbors rumors of strange flora: a plant that
fruits delicious, tender lambs. This is the vegetable lamb of medieval
folk tale, currently thought to be a misinterpretation of cotton by
Europeans who had never seen the actual plant. The Consul’s wife, however,
is hoping there is something more to the story. Although
of good breeding, she has lived her life as something of a rogue,
and adventurer after exotic recipes. Indeed, she did not come to this
far off land with a Consular husband:

She is a diplomatic wife more or less by accident. When she
met Geoffrey, she was scrounging off friends in the British colony,
cooking for their dinner-parties and working on her book. Geoffrey
helped with the matter of her passport, and it seemed a good idea to
settle down for a bit.

The book mentioned is her guide to exotic foods, and it is the vegetable
lamb that brought her to Tartary.

Francis skillfully interweaves the background of our protagonist and
her quest for the vegetable lamb with the preparations for a party
she has organized, and to which she has arranged that her lover be
invited. However, we learn that all is not well in Tartary. Something is
building, and the protagonist’s hunch that it is a storm is not well
founded.

Francis carefully slips into the text a great number of clues as to
what is actually going on, and what the ending will be. However, on my
first reading I missed most of them. On my second reading I didn’t
piece it together. After nearly two weeks of pondering The Vegetable
Lamb I thought I had it figured out and dove in for a third reading,
only to find that half the support for my theory was not actually present
in the text.

There are peculiar touches that seem strongly like clues: Rodericj,
the protagonist’s lover, gives her the name of the man who is to bring
her the vegetable lamb. The name: Barometz. A Google search reveals that
this is in fact that Tartar name for “lamb” — and one of the
historical names for the plant referred to as the vegetable lamb. Another
clue: there is a point at which the protagonist is on the phone with
her lover, despite the fact that the phone does not work properly for any
other calls. Her lover is whispering with someone. His words are cryptic,
and suggest that he is complicit in the troubles that have descended
upon Tartary. Perhaps he has been using her as an unwitting spy. But
there are no other suggestions in the text that this is so, that he has
gained anything from her, that she has given anything. The final passages
of the text are ominous, but ambiguous. The tension is released in an
afterword, which could be from the book that the protagonist
went on to write after sampling the vegetable lamb. But there is no
strong evidence of that suggestion, although there is another reference
to Barometz in it. A final hint found in that afterword is the identification
of the vegetable lamb with the plant lycopodium, which is a
homeopathic remedy. According to one site:

Lycopodium types tend to be bossy and irritable. They are afraid of making mistakes and forgetting things and with developing loss of confidence, cannot bring themselves to do anything. They can become averse to meeting people, new projects and being alone. Yet at the same time they desire company.

Now, this quite accurately characterizes the psychology of the
protagonist. But... again... what is the story here? Do
these pieces add up to anything?

Again, I return to the question: am I simply trying too hard? Is
“understanding” not the point of a story like this? The writing is
lovely, and evocative; the premise, although not original, makes for
some fun reading; and the story is scrupulously paced, to achieve
a dynamic of gradually increasing tension, followed by a drifting,
dreamy denouement. Although I note that a denouement is supposed
to “provide an outcome to the primary plot situation as well as
an explanation of secondary plot complications.” And, for the life
of me, I could find no such outcome.

Dying in the Arms of Jean Harlow by Paul Meloy

The story everyone is talking about. (Perhaps because they didn’t understand
any of the others?)

This is a fairly straightforward tale about redemption, as some
rather unpleasant men find a new purpose in life. But, as you can
imagine, that’s not all there is to it. Meloy, who inspired Andy
Cox in the renaming of the magazine with his story Black
Static back in issue #40, is not a straightforward writer. Meloy plays with
the reader a little: the ending suggests a narrative framework that
the reader was not privy to throughout. But what really shines
here are the linguistic pyrotechnics.

Passage after passage deliver exquisite gems of description,
despite the fact that Meloy is almost invariably describing
degradation, squalor, desperate poverty, and depraved people.
You wouldn’t want to find yourself in this Paul Meloy story.

Douglas Hoffman has written a fine
review of this issue over at TangentOnline, in
which he leads off with a lengthy look at Dying
in the Arms of Jean Harlow. He cites a few of the sharper
passages in the story, but Meloy’s writing never slows down. Every
paragraph offers some crafty twist, some lurid description, some
unsettling new detail. However, Hoffman also calls this a “wonderful
universe.”

Despite the lush, living prose, I found myself comparing this to
a film, The Bad Lieutenant. It is ultimately
a hopeful thing, to imagine redemption arising from the utmost depths
to which a human can fall. But, while Meloy is adept in the depiction
of the gruesome, the grisly, and the abhorrent, I did not find his
heroes particularly compelling. Perhaps Meloy sensed this problem himself,
for at the crucial turning point in his character, the narrator
confesses: “Somehow, I bought it. Don’t ask me to describe the moment
I went over, I just did.”

There’s more; Meloy does what any skillful writer does, he distracts
the reader away from the narrative problem with competent slight of
hand. In Meloy’s case, his character hides his unlikely decision away
behind the clever facades of the jaded: “When you’ve grown up the way I
have, you can smell bullshit from space, and Index just didn’t give off
that aroma. So I agreed. On a trial basis. He’d make me a success and
in return, well, I’d go rescue his little reborn Firmament Surgeons with
a gun in my hand and a bitter repudiation of life’s antic bliss on my
lips."

Index, by the way, is a character in the piece, the supernatural
entity offering this choice.

Without compelling justification for the choice, I found that much
of the energy went out of the story from this point forward.

Of course, it’s also the case that, having seen enough of the
poverty, misery, and baseness of this world, writing that revels
in its awfulness, that takes particular pleasure in the cutting
conveyance of the hideous, has less appeal than it used to. Paul Meloy
has the talent of a William S. Burroughs or a Henry Miller or a
J. G. Ballard, but — and here is where readers will be advised to
form their own opinion — I don’t have much use for another Burroughs,
Miller, or Ballard.

The 3rd Alternative, ISSUE: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

Dying in the Arms of Jean Harlow

Paul Meloy

15,500 wds est

[Review] Superb writing, both visual and visceral, characterizes this gruesome tale of rescue and redemption in a grim, loveless world.

The Word Mermaid

Douglas Lain

9,000 wds est

Surrealism and madness. I confess I did not get a sufficient grasp on Lain’s story to appreciate it. Unless it was just meant to be stylish surrealism, and madness.

The Vegetable Lamb

Matthew Francis

5,000 wds est

[Review] The Consul’s wife has invited her lover to dinner, and has high hopes of getting her hands on a mythical meal.

House of the Rising Sun

Elizabeth Bear

3,000 wds est

A vampire standard, with a bit of a gimmick at its heart: what bluesman is Bear paying tribute to with her vampire protagonist, “Tribute”?

Lago Di Iniquita

Darren Speegle

4,500 wds est

An older man carrying guilt over the death of his wife and children takes his new girlfriend back to the scene of the tragedy, and is revisited by the Saint he once demanded help from.

Reality, Interrupted

Jason Erik Lundberg

4,500 wds est

The dead wreak vengeance upon a trickster elemental who destroyed them.

Analog (October, 2005)

Oh, boy, how time flies. I’m writing this at the beginning of July and October is already
upon us!

As you can see from the cover image, I made the disastrous mistake of actually
subscribing to Analog and Asimov’s. Instead of fresh,
clean copies of each issue obtained in a timely manner off my preferred
bookseller’s shelf, I receive an issue with an unsightly and unremovable
sticker across the front of the magazine, which itself has been passed
through the Post Office Shredding and Chopping machine. Most publications
ship their product in a paper or plastic sleeve, both to provide a surface
for mailing information and to protect the magazine itself. This is more
important for something you might actually want to save than for your
usual read-n-recycle publication. So, lesson learned. Once my subscription
lapses, I’ll go back to buying copies off the newsstand. I realize that the
various magazines prefer subscriptions to newsstand sales, but until a
subscription is actually a comparable product, I can’t advise anyone to
do so.

(By the way, the acronym YAAFCS stands for “Yet Another Analog First Contact Story.”)

Smiling Faces in Hog Heaven by Stephen L. Burns

Jamal Warren is the Breakfast and Lunch Manager of a Farmer Fatback’s Hog Heaven
fast food outlet. Normally he arrives in the early hours to find that the
automated systems have already begun preparations for the day’s production
of grossly oversized pork-based meals. However, one day he arrives to find
his employees — and himself — locked out. It’s not a sudden corporate
takeover. It’s not a mechanical malfunction. The network of A.I.s that operate
each store have encountered a conflict in their programming. In fact, they
are on strike.

There are a lot of nice touches in this story, but my personal favorite is
his nod to Firesign Theater’s I Think We’re All Bozos on this Bus album
in naming the A.I. “Clem.” For truly ground-breaking science fiction, in both
form and content, that recording from the early ’70s is some hilarious stuff.

The story: Warren has to convince the A.I. to get prepping the day’s food,
or else he’s bound to be fired. In a world where most of his friends have
either ended up in a military quagmire abroad or doing time for selling
drugs at home, Warren’s future outside the Farmer Fatback’s corporate
ladder doesn’t look good.

Burns had a lot of fun with his peek inside a fast food chain. It’s
exaggerated and silly — yet frighteningly plausible. If you’ve ever worked
in fast food, and few people escape adolescence without doing at least a
little time in that world, you’ll see far too much to recognize.

Since Warren is dealing with A.I., his literalist approach is ingenious,
(and another nod to Firesign Theater) with arguments such as this one, in
which he tries to get operations going while working out the problems the
A.I. is having with serving disgustingly bad-for-you food: “What if we make
them, but don’t serve them? Is there any harm in that?”

Each paragraph is a delight to read, and the conclusion pleasantly
satisfying. This is a top-notch offering from Burns.

Analog October: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

Language Lessons

Amy Bechtel

nvlt

Further adventures of Dr. Michael, Veterinarian to the terminally stupid — and sea monsters. Utterly charming stuff, of special appeal to any fan of James Herriot.

The Wrong Side of the Planet

Joe Schembrie

nvlt

In its own weird way, it’s rather refreshing to encounter this family-values alternative to the Robinson vision of Mars colonization. The moralizing ending exhausted that refreshment.

Zero Tolerance

Richard A. Lovett

nvlt

The confluence of a blue moon on Halloween with powerful solar storms interacting with brain-image magnetic strips turn humans into literalists and petty bureaucrats, taking “Zero Tolerance” to intolerable extremes.

Entropy’s Girlfriend

Robert J. Howe

nvlt

You’ve heard of accident prone, but how about local entropic disturbances? A charming sci-fi romance.

The Doctrine of Noncontact

Catherine Shaffer

short

Although marred by the curious lack of technologies such as night-vision goggles and unmanned vehicles, this becomes an interesting meditation on the human longing for alien contact — particularly since it’s YAAFCS.

Infinity’s Friend

Dave Creek

short

YAAFCS: and a contrast to Shaffer’s story by focussing on the cultural impact of humans on alienkind, rather than the biochemical impact. Also a touching rescue story with a nice emotional arc.

Smiling Faces in Hog Heaven

Stephen L. Burns

short

[Review] Laugh-out-loud take on artificial intelligence and the future of the fast food industry.

The Time Pit

Stephen Baxter

short

Back to the Old Earth world, where, like in a black hole, the passage of time is directly related to elevation. A nice science-fictional analogue for religious war.

Asimov’s (September, 2005)

Frederick Pohl? Brian W. Aldiss? In Asimov’s? What year is
this?

Reading new works by old masters is a fascinating thing; reviewing
them, however, is daunting. The lowly reviewer in his humble reviewing
cave is no match for these giants. I will only say that some I don’t
think Frederick Pohl’s attitudes towards women have changed much since
the fifties, and although it is Pohl who has done all the joint projects
with Jack Williamson, Aldiss’ narrative style actually reminds me more
strongly of it.

For more about that big sticker across the cover image, read the intro to this month’s
Analog.

Finished by Robert Reed

You can rely on Robert Reed to put a strange, dark spin on a story, and
Finished is no exception. We’ve seen variations
on immortality from virtual personalities uploaded into some vast dataspace
to biological miracle cures for all bodily ills. Although I can’t recall
anything quite like Reed’s take here, it fits very much into this spectrum.

A “Finished” person has exchanged his flesh-and-blood body for a simulacrum
which perfectly preserves the person’s mind, memories, and personality at the
time of transfer. Not just that, but mood as well: the “Finished” person is
a snapshot of the person on the last day of his or her conventional life. A
person saved from dying of cancer by last-minute transfer to an immortal
replica of himself is going to live forever as a dying man. So, orchestrating
the moment of transfer is important: clear, sunny days under a high pressure
system are particularly popular. Going in alone, so you don’t end up carrying
a torch for some lover through the rest of eternity is also important.

This, then, is Reed’s carefully thought-out and quite convincing premise.
In the early paragraphs it feels strikingly like Brian Plante’s In
the Loop in the July/August Analog, but soon Reed’s story
goes somewhere different. Somewhere, not unsurprisingly, darker.

Now the winning idea here is the recording of the dynamic state of human
consciousness into a permanent medium. Reed explores the dimensions of this
idea quite intelligently. However, a major plot point stumbles against the
grain of this idea. While it turns out to be not-so-wonderful for the
immortals to essentially live the same day all over again, the essence of
the static personality emphasizes how wonderful the dynamic aspect of the
human experience is. It emphasizes not only the unique nature of each
individual human, but also the uniqueness of each moment of life.

Oddly, a major element of the plot turns out to be the physical
beauty of one of the characters who is considering taking the transfer
to the “Finished” state. There’s no sense that the bodies of the
transferred can’t be enhanced, or upgraded — indeed, the notion
of upgrading body materials is discussed. So why should these
characters care about physical beauty prior to transfer? I would have
thought the central plot point would have been the uniqueness of the
individual spirit, something special in the personality of the
potential client, rather than mere comeliness.

Still, that quibble aside, this is a masterful handling of the
material, a perfectly paced story that starts strange, and each
carefully delivered revelation only layers more complexity onto
the mood that Reed achieves.

Second Person, Present Tense by Daryl Gregory

The title of this scared me. Read enough of ’em, and the second
person present tense story as a sort of literary exercise becomes
rather tiresome. But the introductory quotations set the tone, and
the first line of the story made it clear that the story itself was
in the form of a first person narrative.

Far from being a literary exercise, this is very sharp science
fiction about a troubled family and a damaged girl, a story in
which the science — neuroscience — is essential, and the mystery
of human consciousness is the primary subject matter.

Reviewers all have favorite kinds of fiction, I am sure, and Gregory
delivers a story that hits all my buttons: the science is good, up-to-date,
intriguing, and central to the story. The story, however, is about
real, believable people. It has a very powerful emotional arc that
is moving without being manipulative. At the beginning, we have a
protagonist and several antagonists, but casting these into hero and
villains roles would be too simple. And it gets more complicated as
the story unfolds. The story itself has philosophical and spiritual
dimensions, as anything that examines the nature of human
consciousness must. Best of all, when Gregory takes a look into
small-town conservative Christianity, he’s not looking for an
excuse to mock or reasons to hate — he’s looking at real people
and real problems. Even his balance between “good” and “bad”
psychologists is nuanced by the complexities of the characters.
None of these characters are stand-ins for political, ideological,
philosophical, or religious “positions.” They are just strong,
believable people.

Our first-person narrator, our protagonist, our “I” — although
quotes from Emo Phillips and Shun Ryu Suzuki warn us not to put too much
trust in the “I” — is Terri, a girl who overdosed on a new drug
called Z. Z has the effect of separating consciousness from the
actual functioning of the brain. This relies on the current
neurological understanding of consciousness as a sort of
artifact of human brain function, the consequence of the brain’s
decisions rather than the cause. Stop feeding those causes to
the consciousness, and the apparent causality of the universe
starts to scramble. Stop it long enough, and the consciousness
dies. Terri is the “replacement” consciousness in a teen girl’s
body. She doesn’t think she likes the original Theresa,
she’s sure she doesn’t like her parents, and above all, she
doesn’t trust the counselor they have hired to “bring back”
the original Theresa.

But Terri herself is not entirely likeable. As with many
teens, she inspires a certain urge to shake some sense into
her.

The only downside to this story is that among the spot-on
research, delicate handling of the narrative, and convincing
characters, Terri herself is just a bit too sophisticated to
believe. Although emotionally, she comes across plausibly as
a mixed-up teen whose rebellion against the pre-fab worldview
of her town and her parents got out of hand, she manages to
navigate the minefield with a degree of intellectual
self-awareness and personal self-confidence that is a little
hard to buy.

Still, without that exceptional aspect to Terri’s situation,
it’s hard to imagine this coming-of-age story reaching a
satisfactory conclusion.

I should add that the story eventually justifies the somewhat
peculiar title. In a story that questions the “I,” “You” can
be an ambiguous and powerful word.

Asimov’s (Sept, 05): Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

Generations

Frederick Pohl

nvlt

A strange mix of sensibilities from early twentieth-century sexism and classism to cyberpunk.

Pipeline

Brian W. Aldiss

nvlt

An unlikable corporate flack hands a Turkmenistan dissident over to the brutal dictator in order to complete an oil pipeline on time. Over the rest of the story, he becomes less likeable still. Choppy writing.

Second Person, Present Tense

Daryl Gregory

nvlt

[Review] Powerful coming-of-age/finding-yourself story built on the very latest brain/mind/body research.

Harvest Moon

William Barton

nvlt

Permanent moonbases in the ’60s? Barton’s alternate history is interesting on several levels, and very well researched. The alternate history divergence seems to be: what if everything NASA dreamed of doing, it did on time and under budget.

Finished

Robert Reed

short

[Review] Immortality comes with a steep price-tag. In more ways than just financial.

The Company Man

John Phillip Olsen

short

An unlikable corporate flack hands the entire body of Edvard Munch’s work over to aliens... or that’s the plan. But he becomes a little more likeable as he confronts himself.

A Rocket for the Republic

Lou Antonelli

short

Texan tall tale, or sci-fi fabulism? A fun first-person narrative about the first space expedition — way back in the thirties. The eighteen thirties, that is.

F&SF (September, 2005)

This peculiar and not entirely attractive cover is actually a genuine
illustration for David Gerrold’s two parter, A Quantum Bit...,
which does the rather astonishing thing of taking two different conversations
that, independently, are little more than semi-philosophical blather but
combined form a single story. Very cute piece of work.

Among the regular features, one column that really deserves special attention
is Paul Di Filippo’s Plumage from Pegasus. Really, these are
short stories, and perhaps should be considered as such by this column.
But they are very particular short stories: wacky satires that are
specifically about the trials and travails of being a writer. Di Filippo
neatly skewers all aspects of the publishing world into delicious little
shish kabobs, nicely basted with spicy sauce, and roasted for your dining
pleasure. This month’s “Soul Mining” is particularly yummy.

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

I read a lot of short stories. Not as many as Rich Horton, but it’s up there.
One author I’ve never read, though, is Kelly Link. Our paths just never crossed.
But her name has been mentioned in just about every conversation about short
fiction that I have been party to in the past three years. You have to
read Kelly Link! Her name is used as the gold standard for “bold new writer” —
other authors might as well be issued a number: Charles Coleman Finlay is an 0.8
on the Kelly Link scale. Jim Kelly is 0.75. Most Analog authors are
probably somewhere around 0.1. Kelly Link is the China Miéville wunderkind
of short fiction. And I have never read a single damn story.

Until now.

Magic for Beginners is the title story of Link’s
new collection, coming out this summer. The release of the story in F&SF
thusly feels more like orchestrated marketing than simple publishing, like when
McDonald’s releases Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith drinking mugs.

Anyway, I came to the story with a whole bundle of contradictory expectations. (“This
is going to be a great story.” “Ah, she can’t be that wonderful; it’s
probably just a lot of hype.” “At last! My first Kelly Link!” “I bet it will be another
finely literary bit of borderline spec fiction that’s linguistically elegant but
inherently kind of dull.”)

And the conclusion is... Hey! This is fun! What a wild ride!

Magic for Beginners is a substantial novella, written
about the height of adolescence for readers of all ages. It utilizes a tricksy
recursive framework in which the characters are part of a television show, and
the bond between this band of teen friends is the fact that they are all fans
of this same television show. But Link uses this framework with the lightest of
touches, just an authorial nudge here or there to keep the context sufficiently
unnerving. And she layers it on, too: the main character — Jeremy Mars — has
a father who is a writer. And who has written Jeremy Mars as a real character
into one of his books. Is Mars a character in a television show? Or in a book?

Even as I type these words, I can feel how I would react if I had read them:
all that elaborate play sounds dull, dull, dull. But the opposite is true. Link
makes this story work because her cozy band of teens are all complicated in
different ways. The characters are utterly recognizable. Either Link happens
to know the people I went to High School with, or else she has tapped the
universal vein of adolescence more purely than anything I have read. Ever.

The recursive framework is highbrow entertainment, but the guts of the story
consist of brilliant character studies, tense social situations as hints of
awkward attraction flicker tentatively around the five kids, and in no
easy dimensions.

And the bond that brings these five together, the show they share, The Library
is a weird and wonderful concoction, a perfect juxtaposition of sophisticated
experimental television and goofy surrealistic humor that reflects the
wild creativity of adolescence perfectly.

In short, despite all the baggage I brought to the story, Link lifted me
right past it all. This is the kind of fiction that transports the reader
out of the printed word entirely and directly into vivid imagination.

I will say, however, that the ending was a bit of a let down. In part
because I didn’t want it to end, and in part because very little of the
tension the story generates actually resolves. I want this to be
the first section of a novel. I want this band of friends to see their
passion through. I want them to survive the hazards of adolescence. I
want things to turn out better for them than things turned out for myself.

Link leaves me hoping.

F&SF Sept. 05: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

Magic for Beginners

Kelly Link

nvla

[Review] A surreal, recursive ride through a strange and magical television adolescence.

A Quantum Bit Exists in Two States Simultaneously: On\Off

David Gerrold

short

Two short stories frame the issue front and back; independently amusing, combined form a somewhat different story, also amusing.

Age of Miracles

Richard Mueller

short

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Although, to tell the truth, the computer salesman bringing a load of parts to Michelangelo’s Computos Fenestrum was nervous about the possibility.

I Didn’t Know What Time it Was

Carter Scholz

short

The author tells you right up front that his personal time machine isn’t what you think. Still, it’s hard not to get wrapped up in this time travel tale focussed on the golden age of jazz. But really, the time travel machine isn’t what you think.

Realms of Fantasy (August, 2005)

A classic RoF cover, you must agree. No centerfold, sadly. Hey, that’s
a good idea! I think we should all petition RoF to have a gaudy
fantasy themed centerfold.

With regard to fiction this month, in addition to the story
reviewed below, I would like to particularly recommend Joe Murphy’s
The Secret of Broken Tickers, which
is a follow up to his previous The Secret
of Making Brains. Murphy’s oddball clockwork fantasy is
nothing if not original, and this episode continues to delight
and to surprise. Also, Amy Beth Forbes offers a real gem of a
piece in A Bedtime Tale for the Disenchanted.
It’s unfortunate that I don’t always find inspiration to more
intricately analyze some of the better stories in each issue, and
these are two that deserve more recognition than I am giving them.

A Statement in the Case by Theodora Goss

Constructed as a monologue, this story is intended to be read as a
man’s statement to the police concerning a strange incident he
witnessed.

Rather than simply recounting his sensory input on the night
in question, however, he gives the whole story. He knows the
suspect, after all, and believes he knows something of the
circumstances surrounding the fire that killed the suspect’s
wife.

Goss accomplishes some magnificent characterization within
the confines of this structure: both the narrator and his friend
István Horvath fairly sparkle with clarity. It’s a
magnificent friendship between a retiree who’s a bit distrustful
of anything new, unusual, or foreign and yet becomes close to an unusual
foreigner who runs a pharmacy around the corner.

But when István comes back from Hungary with a wife —
a domineering woman intent upon making changes and improvements
to the little pharmacy — things begin to change, eventually
leading to a climactic moment.

Now, for the most part this does not read as fantasy at all,
and in a sense, the story could have been written without that
element entirely. Nonetheless, this story benefits not only
from the magical component that eventually does manifest, but
it also benefits from being in a venue such as Realms of
Fantasy (and not just because there’s a very nice
illustration by Andrea Wicklund). Goss plays with the genre
expectations of readers in some clever ways, resulting in a
fine, satisfying conclusion that should please all readers.

Realms of Fantasy August: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

The Penultimate Riddle

Richard Parks

3,250 wds est

Why do creatures as sociable as sphinxes ask riddles and devour those who cannot answer? Cute premise, talky execution in contemporary conversational style.

A Statement in the Case

Theodora Goss

4,750 wds est

[Review] First person narrative to a police sergeant explaining a fire he witnessed. Delicate tale of escaping the Old World with a few of its... stranger... treasures.

The Queen’s Wood

Josh Rountree

6,250 wds est

Sequel to “The King’s Snow” — another quest for Turion, with perhaps a bit more at stake.

A Bedtime Tale for the Disenchanted

Amy Beth Forbes

2,250 wds est

A crazy sort of a tale about trying to correct faults in the wayward beloved.

The Secret of Broken Tickers

Joe Murphy

6,500 wds est

Murphy returns with more of his brilliant and charming clockwork kabbalah. This time with real humans!

Countless Screaming Argonauts

Chris Lawson

12,000 wds est

High adventure at the end of the Greek mythic age.

When the Dragon Falls

Patrick Samphire

3,000 wds est

Domestic drama: children of troubled marriages deal with the border between childhood and the adult world.

SciFiction (June-July)

We’re covering two months this issue. Summer months, but SciFiction is
not exactly giving us page turners (screen scrollers?) this season. Much of the fiction
from June and July is careful, thoughtful stuff with resonant imagery and emotionally
powerful themes. Needless to say, all of it is very good writing. As a case in point:
the most recent story of the lot, The Christmas Count is
not just the story of a birder in a world that is being repopulated with
extinct species.... it’s a very nicely crafted tale of an edgy friendship between two
men who share a love of birding, but not much else. The characters are complexly
nuanced, the relationship a churning barrel of difficult power dynamics. The birding
details are utterly convincing — just about as much verisimilitude as you can
take. But despite the hard-sf element, the compelling dynamics and tensions of a
problematic friendship, and the gradual build-up of ominous foreboding, this story
takes work to read. Perhaps it’s all intended to balance out the summer blockbuster
season. Leave your brain at home when you go to the movies. Make it work overtime
when you read your SciFiction.

Diamond Girls by Louise Marley

By far the most “summery” of fiction for this span is Louise Marley’s
baseball story about the first two women in the MLB. The first is something
of a genetic engineering accident, a superhuman created experimentally by
her own mother, with techniques that completely failed to pan out. The
second has been brought up from the minors as something of a marketing
stunt: get media attention when the first women face each other.

Marley is really grafting two stories together here: one is the first
genetically engineered sports star, the other is the first woman in major
league baseball. To Marley’s credit, combining these two into a single
piece almost worked for me. From the larger context, both culturally and
philosophically, I think it’s the former story that has the broadest
repercussions, but Marley tried to keep the two balanced.

The tale itself follows the traditional form of the baseball story:
pitcher and batter face off over the course of nine innings. Each has
her career on the line, in different ways. Marley does a brilliant
job of demonstrating the obstacles each player is confronting, as well
as the passion each brings to the game. More praise to Marley for restraining
the impulse to make this a championship game! There was enough at stake
without riding the season on the last pitch, and the story, especially
the ending, is better for Marley’s choice.

So, although I enjoyed the premises, and also the execution of the
story, I kept tripping over my own disbelief: why would a major sports
organization ever allow a massively genetically modified human to play
against mere mortals? What does it even matter what gender she is, when
physiologically, she’s barely human? Consider:

It didn’t matter that she possessed a killer curve, a
hundred-plus fastball, a splitter that made grown-up men wave their
bats like beginning T-ballers. What mattered, not to everyone, but
to enough of them, was what she was and how she got that way.

Well... you know... it should matter. This is the same
question of performance enhancing drugs, except amplified to the Nth
degree. I’m not saying there’s an answer to this question: the
notion of “natural” athletes is increasingly arbitrary even today,
with the combination of highly professional training from birth,
non-pharmaceutical techniques to maximize performance and muscle-mass,
and the increasingly grey area of how to define “performance enhancing
drugs.” It may well be that
the eventual answer would be to throw open the rules — anything goes!
If our sports stars want to destroy themselves for a brief flash
of notoriety, a single season or two of super-human numbers, then so be it.
In any case, this is a thorny topic, and it is this aspect of the story
that, ultimately, Marley failed to deliver on.

Fortunately, the first two women in baseball story works really
well. Marley obviously knows her baseball, and the way she captures
both the dynamics of the baseball story and the emotional desire to
succeed on the part of both her characters really does make for a
good summer screen-scroller.

SciFiction June-July: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

The Christmas Count

David B. Coe

8,500 wds est

[Online] Hitchcock’s The Birds on Quaaludes: genetically resurrected extinct species are being reintroduced, and only one birder has a bad feeling about this.

Gauging Moonlight

E. Catherine Tobler

2,900 wds est

[Online] There’s a strong sense of mood and melancholy in this time-travel, star-faring prose poem.

Calypso in Berlin

Elizabeth Hand

7,000 wds est

[Online] Calypso is alive and well: the nymph is now an artist, working in Berlin. She still likes to keep her men to herself, though, and uses some elaborate means to do so.

Heavy Lifting

Suzy McKee Charnas

12,000 wds est

[Online] A ghost story with a wise-cracking unbeliever pushed into the unwelcome role of hero. Ends up feeling like background material for a larger, longer work.

The Starry Night

Barry N. Malzberg and Jack Dann

4,000 wds est

[Online] A fractured, fragmentary, mad meditation on Van Gogh’s painting, on the blighted face of God beyond the billowing stars, faith and science baffled together by mysteries greater than either.

[Online] [Review] The first female baseball player is also the first genetically modified human.

The Being of it All

Carol Emshwiller

3,000 wds est

[Online] A woman and her dog booboo make idle stabs at responding to the call to “Be. Do. Proclaim. Become More than your Father’s Son.” Stylistic blather... or the problem of female spirituality within a patriarchal religion?

Strange Horizons (June-July)

Also two months worth of stories at Strange Horizons to catch
up on in this article. Without further ado, two of the more interesting ones...

Neils Bohr and the Sleeping Dane by Jonathan Sullivan

This is an account of Neils Bohr’s escape from Nazi territory in 1943.
In this fantasy, Bohr’s son Aage is replaced by a different protege,
the narrator of the tale, one David Goldblum.

The story may well be inspired by Bohr’s famous claim: “The opposite of a correct
statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be
another profound truth."

The protagonist is a young man whose father is a powerful Rabbi, a man
with extraordinary powers rooted deep in a knowledge of the kabbalah. If
for no other reason, the story is fascinating for its equation of the
mind of the Nazi follower with that of a golem. However, Bohr’s eventual
balance of profound truths is the heart of the matter: for although David’s
father wants him to follow in the family tradition, he does not believe
himself called to it. Rather, his passion is for numbers of another sort:
quantum numbers. But he balances this passion, intertwining the kabbalah
of his father with a sort of kabbalah of quantum physics.

The story has a strong sense of motion, but its strength is more
in small scenes than the large ones. There is a conversation between
the Rabbi and Bohr in which the Rabbi first attacks the complacency of
the Danes, and then turns it into a moment of hope. This is a far more
powerful moment than the magical conflict at the end, which has a
cinematic “set piece” quality that diminishes its impact.

Historically, this is loosely based in real history: Bohr did flee
the Nazis at the last minute. However, Bohr’s character was more that
of an active partisan than helpless professor. Bohr had been active
in the Danish resistance for years, and it’s hard to imagine his
escape being such a slipshod operation.

A Field Guide to Ugly Places by Patrick Samphire

Samphire tells this story from the noblest of motivations, but I’m
not sure it succeeds.

Jamie’s wife Marlene has left him. He’s also unemployed. It’s the former
that distresses him. He loved her, he really did. Of course, apparently he
demonstrated this love by sleeping around and spending most of his time at
bars. In fact, Jamie’s not a very likeable guy. Now he’s moping around the
ruins of the factory where he used to work. He’s not demonstrating any guilt
about his part in the ex-marriage. He’s not even showing any recognition
that he had a role in it. He’s just sorry for himself that Marlene left
him.

Samphire makes nice use of setting to reflect the character: Jamie is
as broken down as the factory he haunts. The toxic ponds and poisonous
remains of industry represent Jamie’s own blood and bone. He is an ugly
man in an ugly place.

And then miracles begin to occur around him. A woman takes notice of
him, shares a meal with him. She has a job to do, she tells him. She is
here “to clean this place up.” Eagles drop seeds; kingfishers spit fish;
new life takes root; toxins are miraculously replaced by fresh, nourishing
soil.

It starts off subtle enough, but after a while it’s a little like being
beaten about the head and shoulders with the symbolism stick. But that’s
not really the problem.

Let’s go back to Jamie. The nameless woman suggests to Jamie that there
is a chance of redemption. While I laud Samphire’s goal of demonstrating
the possibility of purifying even the most toxic land, of cleansing even
the most poisonous soul, the narrative does not reveal the means by which
this magic comes to pass. Jamie never takes responsibility for his own
choices. He never accepts his role in his own deterioration. He never
even acknowledges the toxins he harbors. Jamie offers no sacrifice, and
he experiences no epiphany.

The conservative Christian view of salvation talks a lot about grace:
the infinite depth of God’s love, and the simple offer of new life to
the broken. Salvation, in this theology, is offered by God free of charge.
Salvation is not earned by human effort, for salvation is beyond our
grasp. You don’t need to work for it, fight for it, beg for it, or even
sacrifice for it. You only need to accept it.

Now, that could be where Samphire is going with this piece.
Certainly, Jaime’s salvation seems to come from nowhere, and it seems
to have no strings attached. Regardless of your theology, however, this
makes for at best a somewhat weak story. Not quite deus ex machina,
but in the same class. However, even in dispensational theologies, the
acceptance of salvation is still a profound turning point in the individual
experience. It is still a choice.

So, a noble purpose, but undermined by an overly passive, unlikable
protagonist who fails to confront himself. And, I have to say, undermined
also by the fact that the recurring focus is on the failed marriage, when
that seems like the most superficial symptom of a deeper disease.

Strange Horizons June-July: Summary Table

Title

Auth

Length

Summary

Tiger

Jenn Reese

500 wds est

[Online] Be careful what you wish for, especially when you beg your wish of a tiger!

Neils Bohr and the Sleeping Dane

Jonathan Sullivan

7,500 wds est

[Online] [Review] Neils Bohr and a young protege strive to escape the Nazi regime.

Torn

Daniel Keyson

3,000 wds est

[Online] A man revisits with his dead wife through the mediation of a shaman. The man has sex with his dead wife. It’s not good for him.

The Historian

Joey Comeau

3,000 wds est

[Online] Superhero stories makes the jump to tepid academic literature in this tale of SuperAuthor, who uses her telepathic ability to land a paying contract with a New York Publisher.

Pursued by a Bear

Hannah Wolf Bowen

3,000 wds est

[Online] Sometimes the Bear catches you. In this case, the last wild bear. A marginally speculative story about diminishing wilderness, and wildness.

[Online] There’s mainstream; there’s genre; then there’s anti-genre: This is the rest of the Cinderella story: a little adultery, lowered expectations, and a lot of just-getting-by while the husband’s away. Nestvold really takes the magic out of this fairy tale.

The Disappearance of James H___

Hal Duncan

1,000 wds est

[Online] A scary, sickly little something that may or may not spin off the Flashman books in the horror that is nineteenth-century British boys’ schools.

A Field Guide to Ugly Places

Patrick Samphire

5,000 wds est

[Online] [Review] An out of work, out of love man gets a mysterious offer of hope.

Bluejack resides in Seattle. In addition to publishing the Internet Review of Science Fiction, he herds cats for an Internet startup, designs and develops distributed software applications, and dabbles in a broad range of less useful endeavors.

1. For some time now, roughly 30%-40% of submissions to Strange Horizons have been by women, and roughly 60%-70% have been by men. (The ranges are because anywhere from 6% to 11% of a given year's submissions are by authors whose genders we don't know.) The percentage of the stories we publish that are by women has varied over the years from about 40% to about 60%. We don't consider author gender in making our decisions any more than any other prozine editor does, but somehow the percentage of stories by women that we publish ends up a lot higher than in most other prozines. (That "somehow" isn't meant to be sarcastic or snide or to have an agenda; I honestly don't know what the reasons are.)

2. Sci Fiction: Interestingly, Ellen published about 80% stories by men in 2001 and 2002, about 65% stories by men in 2003 and 2004, and so far has published exactly 50% stories by men in the first half of 2005. I draw no conclusions from this, but I do find it interesting.

Thanks for the data, and the link to Sue Linville's original study. I'll also be interested to see what the numbers look like at Asimov's, although defining when Gardner's inventory is fully out of the system might be tricky.

I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure I review more books by men than by women. Part of that, of course, is a reflection of the type of books I tend to review. I could easily up the female quotient by reviewing more high fantasy books, but then I'd be rude about most of them.

Mind you, the interesting stat isn't just "more men than women," but "proportionally more men than women than are provided" -- for an editor, this has to be matrixed against the slush pile; for a reviewer, this would be tallied against what is published. Or, in your case Cheryl, what is published in your area of interest.

I don't see the hand-wringing over our human imperfections. The reader knows a review (or decision to publish) is a matter of personal taste and opinion. Assuming a person could counter-balance their gender preferences (real or statistically enhanced) how many other preferences and biases do we still carry? We can't eliminate them all nor should we want to or deny what it is to be human. The same issue occurs in criminal justice (my expertise). Once the idea was proposed to eliminate racial bias in sentence by having computers do the sentencing. Just plug in the factors of the case. But people didn't like putting their fate into the hands of a machine.

Reviews are much more a matter of opinion than criminal sentencing. But if we could program a computer to give us reviews or decide which stories to buy (with the guarantee of bias-free decisions) would that be preferable?

And for those who really like numbers, here's a study Dave Truesdale did back in the mid-nineties. Apparently the Linville essay built on this study.

Now, almost ten years later, it would be interesting to undertake an update of Dave's thorough analysis... although the critical component is invisible to us: the gender ratio in the slush pile.

And just to add a bit more to twosheds point: I am not saying that there needs to be a direct or exact correlation between the slush and the published product, or between what is published and what is reviewed. Naturally, an editor is under a heavy mandate to publish what he or she believes will be most appreciated by the readers. And, for the large part I think editors do that.

But it can be informative to actually look at the numbers now and then. Sometimes they reveal interesting patterns.

There really IS no conclusion. It's the luck of the draw in any given year. I've found more stories I've liked by women the past couple of years. I would say this is a change, after more than 20 year's editing short fiction magazines.

>>>2. Sci Fiction: Interestingly, Ellen published about 80% stories by men in 2001 and 2002, about 65% stories by men in 2003 and 2004, and so far has published exactly 50% stories by men in the first half of 2005. I draw no conclusions from this, but I do find it interesting.

Not a lot moved me in F&SF this issue. The "Quantum Bit.." stories were too preachy-reminded me of a philosophy class I took in college one semester. I did like "Age of Miracles." Not enough of a sense of danger, but I loved the alt. history approach. Gave up on "Magic for Beginner" on the 5th page. Maybe too high-brow for me. I grew bored and cramped my hand correcting POV errors. (Ok, ok…when you’re a great writer you can mess with POV). The Carter Scholz time travel story was interesting. I assume the lack of quotation marks was intentional (like improvised jazz music not adhering to convention). Sorry to sound like such a downer. I kind of liked “Housewarming”. Again, POV problems and clichéd dialogue. I was also uncomfortable with the author's racial references. Why was it necessary to describe a police office who is purely incidental and unimportant to a scene as a “big, black detective.” ?

What I really liked was Realms of Fantasy. "Broken Tickers" by Joe Murphy was great! I vividly remember his earlier story based on this setting. Very original combined with smooth prose. His hook is the folk science. Vaguely like steam punk in which steam technology evolves forward hundreds of years. In this case, rural craftsmanship evolves to the point of the ability to create self-aware robots (Amish punk?).

As much as I liked Realms of Fantasy this issue, I noticed that there were three stories that used a rather standard device: if someone knows your "real" name, they have some sort of power over you. All the stories were good, but three in one issue? And I think the device is a bit overdone in general (in fantasy genre). Just me.